


The Opposite of Homesickness

by thebaddestwolf



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 21:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1998342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebaddestwolf/pseuds/thebaddestwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose is having trouble falling asleep in her old bedroom until the Doctor stops by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Opposite of Homesickness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: ten/rose, night, quiet.

Rose sighs as she rolls over in bed for what must be the twentieth time in the last hour, legs tangling in the pink duvet. She stares blankly ahead for a few moments before focusing her eyes on the photos on her dresser — an action shot of Mickey playing footie, big smiles on the faces of her friends from school. 

Flipping over again, she turns her back to the reminders of her old life. It’s not that she doesn’t look back on those memories fondly, but she’ll never sleep at this rate if she lets her mind wander into the dangerous emotional terrain that was her life before the Doctor.

She has a hard enough time falling asleep in her old bedroom as it is, without the TARDIS’s gentle hum lulling her senses. But her mum likes her to sleep in her old bed when they visit, even though the ship is parked right in the front room. 

Turning onto her back, Rose stares at the ceiling, smiling at the glow in-the-dark stars she’d stuck up there with putty when she was thirteen. Her plan was to recreate all the major constellations, but she’d become frustrated after ursa minor and scattered the rest of the plastic stars about helter-sketler. She smiles and bites her thumbnail, imagining the outraged look that would form on the Doctor’s face if he saw their disarray. 

"Rose?"

His whisper is so quiet she wouldn’t have heard it if she weren’t so damn attuned to everything he does. 

"Yeah?" She props herself up on her elbows, grinning at the closed door he’s standing behind. It’s so easy to envision him, hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot. 

"Can I come in?"

"Dunno, can you?"

The door opens a crack and he pokes his head inside.

"Cheeky." 

Rose sits up as he shuts the door silently behind him and walks to her bed, sitting on the end and resting a hand on her duvet-covered ankle. He tugs at his ear and smiles at her, and even though she’d seen him just an hour earlier an overwhelming warmth spreads through her chest. It’s like that feeling you get when you meet up with an old friend in a foreign city or when your parents visit you at sleep-away camp. The opposite of homesickness. 

"What’ve you been up to?" he asks, as if her sitting in bed, in the dark, in her pajamas, at midnight isn’t any indication. His fingers tap a rhythm on her shinbone. 

"Oh you know," she smirks, unable to resist teasing him. "Editing my manifesto."

"Ah." He nods. "What’s it about again?"

"The nocturnal habits of the last remaining Time Lord."

"Hm, sounds a bit trite." He scrunches his nose and she giggles. "Is it too late to change your direction?"

"Afraid so."

"Pity."

He waggles his eyebrows. 

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"Why are we whispering?"

He stands and slips off his chucks as Rose scoots over, pulling back the corner of the duvet. Watching him shrug off his jacket and loosen his tie, she smiles at the familiarity of the routine.

"Don’t want to wake Jackie," he says — whispers — slipping under the covers.

It’s a tight squeeze in the twin bed, their shoulders and hips touching, and if Rose were to face him their noses would be, too. She bites her lip and looks straight ahead. Beneath the duvet, the Doctor wiggles his toes.

"Mum sleeps like a log, you know that."

"Eh, don’t want to risk it." He’s fidgeting, and a glance to her left reveals he’s taking off his tie, then rolling up the cuffs of his Oxford. "Besides, whispering’s fun. We don’t do it enough, in fact, should make a point to whisper more."

"Sure, I’ll add it to the list of things we should do more often — right after eating without utensils and making up ridiculous backstories for the animals at the zoo."

"Rose Tyler, that walrus was a marine professor before he was unfairly taken into captivity and you can’t convince me otherwise."

She giggles and he nudges her shoulder before taking her hand in his, lacing their fingers as they do.

"Now, why aren’t you asleep? We’re leaving right after breakfast — you should rest."

"Dunno." She slouches lower against her pillow, feeling sleepier at the mere suggestion. "It’s getting more difficult to sleep away from the TARDIS, I guess."

The Doctor slouches, too, his toes nearly to the end of the mattress. 

"Really? You fell asleep in a wink when we were in that jail cell last week. And all we had was a straw mat."

"Yeah, but that time I had…"

She pauses. Yawns. Slouches until she’s flat on her back.

He does too. 

"You had what?"

His thumb smooths across her knuckles and Rose rolls her eyes at the ceiling. He knows.

The glowing green stars seem brighter than before and she waits for him to make an offended sound at their design — or lack thereof — but he stays quiet. 

"See anything you recognize?"

"Hm?"

She turns to face him, another tease on her tongue, one that’s forgotten when she and the Doctor are suddenly nose to nose. From this vantage point she can’t see his mouth, but his eyes are smiling. 

"Um, the stars," she whispers, because they’re too close not to. "On my ceiling."

"Oh," he blinks and turns to look upward. "Right."

"Ah, ursa minor," he says, and she rolls onto her side to watch him, waiting for his frown. It doesn’t come.

"And the sculptor constellation from the Andromeda galaxy," he grins, pointing. "The fire-breathing stallion from Omega Centauri, and the great, big pinwheel from Messier 83. Brilliant!"

He releases her hand and wedges his arm beneath her until he’s circling her back, pulling her in close. Rose freezes for an instant before scooting nearer and resting her cheek on his shoulder. As he continues naming constellations she didn’t know were there, she rests her hand on his chest and lets her eyes fall shut.

When the Doctor finally names every star formation he can recognize Rose giggles against the collar of his shirt.

"You know I just threw all of those up there randomly, right?"

"Ah, but that’s the beauty of the universe," he says, fingers stroking her arm. "It’s random and limitless. You were always sleeping beneath the stars of other worlds — you just didn’t know it."

For some reason this realization makes the backs of her eyes sting and Rose lifts her head, kissing the skin just beneath his jaw. The Doctor’s grip on her arm tightens. 

"Rose."

His whisper is even quieter than when he uttered her name from outside her door. He shifts onto his side, both arms closing around her, and she can feel his nose against her cheek, his breath on her skin.

She tilts her chin upward and his lips are there, warm and smooth against hers, and she gets that feeling again — the one that tells her she’s exactly where she needs to be. 

They get some sleep, eventually, and Jackie has to make an extra pot of coffee at breakfast.

Then they go home. 


End file.
